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The Counselor – Savages n°2

I am not going to hide my huge deception.

Ridley Scott as a director, Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, as actors, Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz as actresses AND YET, they found out a way to screw everything up. Even though, the two actresses are not really what I consider breathtaking ones, they could have been good enough to save a little bit the movie, but they preferred to choose the telenovelas style for Cruz, and the overplaying for Diaz. But the most disappointing thing, was Fassbender’s performance, which was astonishingly amateurish. It is, no questioning, his worst performance ever. The only thing he had been able to do properly, was to cry (he definitely knows how to do this). Also, I know now, which is the worst movie Brad Pitt ever played in.

Now that I let out the biggest part of my discontent, let’s go deeper into the film.

The Counselor is another drug-traffic movie, combining a nice guy entering the wrong playground, romance, and action. However, for some mysterious reasons, Scott and Cormac McCarthy (the screenwriter), decided to add madness in all the characters, withdraw every credibility from them, and to give them long, and not very comprehensible dialogues, with neither head nor tales.
It strongly reminded me of what I thought of Savages (Oliver Stone), which regrouped a great cast, had a same kind of scenario and yet was a terrible mess.

The story is vaguely understood; there is this lawyer, known as The Counselor (Michael Fassbender), he is wealthy, madly in love with Laura (Penelope Cruz) who loves him back, and he seems to do great. Now, God knows why, he accepted to be involved in drug trafficking when his asshole of a friend, Reiner (Javier Bardem), talked about it.
Therefore, through endless dialogues, wanting to be philosophical, we get that “greed” is in center of the whole thing, that and the twisted human nature.

The problem, is the following: there is many characters, too many, and several plot twists, thus at some point, you’re lost, or you just gave up and let yourself drowned. Clearly the issue is that, the scenario is not logical at all, or at least not well sewed. The only thing that “mesmerized” me – and I found that a little creepy – is the unique scene of an elaborated murder (which I am not going to spoil).
The defective screenplay is even more lowered thanks to the actors, and their cruel lack of credibility in their acting. Bardem is just ridiculous, in his costume, with his haircut, and adopting this frenetic behavior; Fassbender pitied me; Diaz was maybe too overconfident and Cruz was useless. I may appear to be a little harsh, and it is probably because my expectations were higher, nevertheless, I am really not able to say if the movie was really pretentious or just another film where everybody wanted to laugh a little bit.

Well, in a nutshell, what you remember when finishing the movie is: Fassbender’s crying, Diaz fucking a car, and a lot of logorrhea.